When entering a planet’s atmosphere, spacecraft induce a strong compression shock and must be protected from the resulting extreme heat flux by a thermal protection system made of either reusable or ablative materials. To characterise these materials, the harsh flow conditions of atmospheric entry are reproduced in plasma wind tunnels, where a jet of gas heated up to ionisation is directed at material samples for prolonged testing. Unfortunately, heated jets exhibit complex dynamic behaviours, resulting in oscillations that increase the uncertainties in the experiments.At sufficient Reynolds numbers, the dynamic behaviour of heated jets shifts from an amplifier to a self-sustained oscillator type via a Hopf bifurcation, if the centreline-to-ambient density ratio falls below a given threshold. This change is known in the literature to be related to the onset of absolute instabilities in the flow. However, this type of instability is usually studied for a simplified description of the gas, which is not suitable for the case of a plasma wind tunnel.This doctoral work investigates the nature of the instabilities responsible for the oscillations observed in a plasma jet, similar to the one in the VKI Plasmatron facility. The analysis is carried out by comparing results from different numerical methods, including linear stability analyses (both local and global) and direct numerical simulations. The thesis first describes the effect of high-temperature gas models on the stability of synthetic jets found in the literature, before analysing the case of Plasmatron.The analysis of synthetic jets with real-gas effects shows that the onset of the first dissociation reactions in the flow has a strong influence on the prevailing type of instability. Furthermore, if a sufficiently long region of absolute instability is present in the jet, the flow bifurcates to a periodic limit cycle, and steady state solutions become inadequate to describe the flow and its dynamic behaviour. In this case, a stability analysis of the time-averaged state can accurately reproduce the results of direct numerical simulations. In the case of Plasmatron, a large region of absolute instability is revealed in the plasma jet, suggesting that the observed oscillations are caused (in part) by a global non-linear mode and that the flow has entered a limit cycle. Trends of the absolute instability frequency with respect to the driving parameters of Plasmatron are in agreement with experimental observations.The present work confirms that global stability features of heated jet flows are very sensitive to subtle changes of the undisturbed or time-averaged state, which results from technological constraints in the case of Plasmatron. Furthermore, this thesis has shown the relevance of including high-temperature gas effects in the stability analysis of high-enthalpy jets. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Boundary-layer transition from a laminar to a turbulent regime is a critical driver in the design of high-speed vehicles. The aerothermodynamic loads associated with transitional or fully turbulent hypersonic boundary layers are several times higher than those associated with laminar flow. The presence of isolated roughness elements on the surface of a body can accelerate the growth of incoming disturbances and introduce additional instability mechanisms in the flow field, eventually leading to a premature occurrence of transition. This dissertation studies the instabilities induced by three-dimensional discrete roughness elements located inside a high-speed boundary layer developing on a flat plate. Two-dimensional local linear stability theory (2D-LST) is employed to identify the instabilities evolving in the three-dimensional flow field that characterizes the wake induced by the roughness elements and to investigate their evolution downstream. A formulation of the disturbance energy evolution equation available for base flows depending on a single spatial direction is generalized for the first time to base flows featuring two inhomogeneous directions and perturbations depending on three spatial directions. This generalization allows to obtain a decomposition of the temporal growth rate of 2D-LST instabilities into the different contributions that lead to the production and dissipation of the total disturbance energy. This novel extension of the formulation provides an additional layer of information for understanding the energy exchange mechanisms between a three-dimensional base flow and the perturbations resulting from 2D-LST. Stability computations for a calorically perfect gas illustrate that the wake induced by the roughness elements supports the growth of different sinuous and varicose instabilities which coexist together with the Mack-mode perturbations that evolve in the flat-plate boundary layer, and which become modulated by the roughness-element wake. A single pair of sinuous and varicose disturbances is found to dominate the wake instability in the vicinity of the obstacles. The application of the newly developed decomposition of the temporal growth rate reveals that the roughness-induced wake modes extract most of their potential energy from the transport of entropy fluctuations across the base-flow temperature gradients and most of their kinetic energy from the work of the disturbance Reynolds stresses against the base-flow velocity gradients. Further downstream, the growth rate of the wake instabilities is found to be influenced by the presence of Mack-mode disturbances developing on the flat plate. Strong evidence is observed of a continuous synchronization mechanism between the wake instabilities and the Mack-mode perturbations. This phenomenon leads to an enhancement of the amplification rate of the wake modes far downstream of the roughness element, ultimately increasing the associated integrated amplification factors for some of the investigated conditions. The effects of vibrational molecular excitation and chemical non-equilibrium on the instabilities induced by a roughness element are studied for the case of a high-temperature boundary layer developing on a sharp wedge configuration. For this purpose, a 2D-LST solver for chemical non-equilibrium flows is developed for the first time, featuring a fully consistent implementation of the thermal and transport models employed for the base flow and the perturbation fields. This is achieved thanks to the automatic derivation and implementation tool (ADIT) available within the von Karman Institute extensible stability and transition analysis (VESTA) tool-kit, which enables an automatic derivation and implementation of the 2D-LST governing equations for different thermodynamic flow assumptions and models. The stability computations for this configuration show that sinuous and varicose disturbances also dominate the wake instability in the presence of vibrational molecular energy mode excitation and chemical reactions. The resulting base-flow cooling associated with the modeling of such high-temperature phenomena is found to have opposite stabilizing and destabilizing effects on the streamwise evolution of the sinuous and varicose instabilities. The modeling of vibrational excitation and chemical non-equilibrium acting exclusively on the perturbations is found to have a stabilizing influence in all cases. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Aviation industry is continuously growing especially for very long distance flights due to the globalisation of local economies around the world and the explosive economic growth in Asia. Reducing the time of intercontinental flights from 16-20 hours to 4 hours or less would therefore make the, already booming, ultra-long distance aviation sector even more attractive. To accomplish this drastic travel time reduction for civil transport, hypersonic cruise aircraft are considered as a potential cost-effective solution. Such vehicles should also be fuelled by liquid hydrogen, which is identified as the only viable propellant to achieve antipodal hypersonic flight with low environmental impact. Despite considerable research on hypersonic aircraft and hydrogen fuel, several major challenges should still be addressed before such airliner becomes reality. The current thesis is therefore motivated by the potential benefit of hydrogen-fuelled hypersonic cruise vehicles associated with their limited state-of-the-art.Hypersonic cruise aircraft require innovative structural configurations and thermal management solutions due to the extremely harsh flight environment, while the uncommon physical properties of liquid hydrogen, combined with high and long-term heat fluxes, introduce complex design and technological storage issues. Achieving hypersonic cruise vehicles is also complicated by the multidisciplinary nature of their design. In the scope of the present research, appropriate methodologies are developed to assess, design and optimize the thermo-structural model and the cryogenic fuel tanks of long-range hydrogen-fuelled hypersonic civil aircraft. Two notional vehicles, cruising at Mach 5 and Mach 8, are then investigated with the implemented methodologies. The design analysis of light yet highly insulated liquid hydrogen tanks for hypersonic cruise vehicles indicates an optimal gravimetric efficiency of 70-75% depending on insulation system, tank wall material, tank diameter, and flight profile. A combination of foam and load-bearing aerogel blanket leads to the lightest cryogenic tank for both the Mach 5 and the Mach 8 aircraft. If the aerogel blanket cannot be strengthened sufficiently so that it can bear the full load, then a combination of foam and fibrous insulation materials gives the best solution for both vehicles. The aero-thermal and structural design analysis of the Mach 5 cruiser shows that the lightest hot-structure is a titanium alloy construction made of honeycomb sandwich panels. This concept leads to a wing-body weight of 143.9 t, of which 36% accounts for the wing, 32% for the fuselage, and 32% for the cryogenic tanks. As expected, hypersonic thermal loads lead to important weight penalties (of more than 35%). The design of the insulated cold structure, however, demonstrates that the long-term high-speed flight of the airliner requires a substantial thermal protection system, such that the best configuration (obtained by load-bearing aerogel blanket) leads to a titanium cold design of only 4% lighter than the hot structure. Using aluminium 7075 rather than titanium offers a further weight saving of about 2%, resulting in a 135.4 t wing-body weight (with a contribution of 23%, 25%, 18% and 34% from the TPS, the wing, the fuselage, and the cryogenic tanks respectively). Given the design hypotheses, the difference in weight is not significant enough to make a decisive choice between hot and cold concepts. This requires the current methodologies to be further elaborated by relaxing the simplifications. Investigation of the thermal protection must be extended from one single point to different regions of the vehicle, and the TPS thickness and weight should be considered in the structural sizing of the cold design. More generally, the design process should be matured by including additional (static, dynamic and transient) loads, special structural concepts, multi-material configurations and other parameters such as cost and safety aspects. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / This thesis was conducted in co-tutelle between University of Sydney and Université Libre de Bruxelles.Professor Dries Verstraete was my supervisor at the University of Sydney (so as a member of SydneyUni), but is automatically registered here as a member of ULB because he worked at ULB almost ten years ago.Ben Thornber is also a member of the University of Sydney but the application does not save it for an unknown reason. / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In response to serious environmental and economic concerns, the design and production of aircrafts have been changing profoundly over the past decades with the nose-to-tail switch from metallic materials to lightweight composite materials such as carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP). In this context, the present doctoral research work aimed to contribute to the development of a CFRP booster casing, a real innovation in the field initiated and conducted by Safran Aero Boosters. More specifically, this thesis addresses the matter of joining metal/CFRP hybrid structures, which are prone to possibly detrimental residual stresses.The issue is treated with an approach combining experimental characterisation and finite element (FE) simulations. The multi-layered system’s state of damage was systematically examined on hundreds of micrographs, and the outcome of this study is presented under the form of a statistical analysis. Further, the defects’ 3D morphology is investigated by incremental polishing. A number of thermal and mechanical properties are measured by diverse physical tests on part of the constituent materials, i.e. the aerospace grade RTM6 epoxy resin, the structural Redux 322 epoxy film adhesive, and AISI 316L stainless steel. They are used as input data in a FE model of the multilayer that is developed and progressively refined to obtain detailed residual stress fields after thermal loading. These results are compared to experimental data acquired by X-ray diffraction stress analysis and with the curvature-based Stoney formula. Cohesive elements are placed at specific locations within the FE model to allow simulating progressive damage. Peel tests, mode I, mode II and mixed mode I/II fracture tests are thus performed in view of measuring the joint toughness. The results of these tests are discussed and the presence of residual stress in the fracture specimens is highlighted. Key information for the calibration of the cohesive law is finally identified via inverse FE analysis of the mode I test, this being a significant step in the process of building a damage predictive FE model of the multi-layered system. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished